Thursday, August 7, 2014

Beach Ball Poetry

Summer is winding down, but there's still time to bridge that gap between school and vacation with a fun writing project. Some of my favorite writing projects don't include paper at all. With this project, we took a summer toy and turned it into poetry. Beach ball poetry was fun, easy, and didn't feel like work at all.

You don't need many supplies for this project, just a beach ball, some permanent markers, and a couple of creative minds. We took our project outdoors to get some inspiration from the world around us. My original plan was to have the girls write a poem about summer on the beach ball. If you've been around this blog enough, you'll notice that often the girls often have ideas of their own. I've learned over time to just let go of my ideas and have them run with their own. The project always turns out better than I ever anticipated.

Instead of a poem about summer, the girls wrote poems about the seasons. They chose three seasons only because there wasn't enough room on the beach ball for all four. They wrote a short poem about each season in the color sections and illustrated their poem on the white sections. My role because the official beach ball holder, spelling helper, and umbrella drawer.

The girls wrote free-form poems. We didn't worry about rhyming, line length, rhythm, or anything else. They just wrote descriptions of the seasons. They each took turns writing a line. They wrote about swimming, watching flowers grow, and playing in the snow. It was so much fun and so inspiring.

Have you ever written a poem on something other than paper? I'd definitely encourage it! The surface inspires the poem. It's fun. It's quirky. And, the creativity just starts flowing when you mix things up. Find a beach ball and have some writing fun. Your kids will have fun and writing won't feel like a chore.

Are you interested in more writing ideas?

You can find many fun ideas on my Reading and Writing Pinterest board.